Developers are most wary of these technologies being hacked

Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2017 by
CHRISTIAN HARGRAVE, Assignment EditorIn a new survey by Netsparker Ltd., a provider of web applications security, developers agreed that the government and financial services are the two sectors most vulnerable to hacking and that smart home IoT is the most vulnerable technology.

Propeller Insights conducted the recent survey of U.S.-based software developers for Netsparker from July 5-7, 2017.

Government most vulnerable to hacking

Developers are sounding the alarm: almost two-thirds (61 percent) feel that the government is vulnerable to hacking; another half (50 percent) say the financial services industry is the most vulnerable. This is followed by:

Safeguarding future elections

The past two years have provided many “teachable” moments in the world of cybersecurity. When asked which recent hacks were the most “innovative,” developers agreed that the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) topped the list (47 percent), followed by WannaCry (32 percent), the CIA security breach (30 percent), Chipotle (25 percent) and OneLogin (23 percent).

When it comes to election hacking, developers are united in feeling that democratic governments are vulnerable to it because political parties lack IT/security expertise (57 percent) and because of outdated and potentially insecure polling equipment (54 percent).

According to survey respondents, the ways to most effectively combat the risk include:

Another 40 percent believe that governments should provide secure systems to political parties; however, only 10 percent felt that politicians communicating over email was a concern.

Cybersecurity in the boardroom

Of the reasons corporations don’t take cybersecurity seriously, developers believe the two biggest culprits are lack of IT understanding and budget (57 percent each), followed by an absence of concern (39 percent) and the fact that cybersecurity is complicated to understand (30 percent).

When data breaches do strike, developers think companies should turn to the police and IT forensics specialists: